Graphics applications, such as computer games, combine 3D geometric data with 2D texture data to generate images. However, conventional texture mapping may cause artifacts in the image under certain conditions. For example, sampling a texture map at a particular resolution may break down under scaling. Texture maps are registered to the underlying 3D geometry using texture coordinates. While the 3D geometry can be sampled at any scale, the texture map is registered to the geometry at a particular scale (or scales in the case of mip-mapped textures). Sampling these texture maps at resolutions much different than the provided scales may cause artifacts when the size of a texel varies greatly compared to the size of a pixel.
However, the use of texture maps was not always the way computer images were generated. Some of the earliest rendering techniques were vector-based rather than raster-based. In other words, images were rendered based on parameterized line segments and curves that could be easily rendered at any scale. Vector graphics continue to be used today in areas where quality approximation is not acceptable, such as in illustration and computer-aided design. Vector graphic formats, such as PostScript or SVG, can be conceptualized as programs that describe the process for rendering an image composed of potentially overlapping geometric primitives. For this reason, computing a color at a particular pixel may necessitate executing the whole “program” and can be inefficient in the context of graphics applications like computer games where only a portion of an image may need to be rendered and samples are irregularly distributed. Furthermore, vector graphics formats tend to be sequential in nature, which hinders any hardware optimization that can be implemented to make them more efficient. Thus, there is a need for addressing these issues and/or other issues associated with the prior art.